Amazon claims more of teens ‘Prime’ mindshare in new survey

Leave it to the Teens: It’s no secret that when it comes to advertising, many companies want to get the teen consumer on board. Just look at how a lot of commercials on TV are produced. I may buy an Old Navy shirt, but Old Navy isn’t marketing toward guys like me on the other side of 40.

The same goes for Amazon. Its combination of easy e-commerce shopping and the Prime Video streaming service provide a one-two punch that gives the company the kind of brand recognition other companies can only dream of having. And according to a survey by Piper Jaffray, that mindshare, as it is called in the branding industry, is growing and embedding Amazon’s presence among American teenagers to a point where other rivals are likely going to play catchup for years to come.

Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson said a survey of more than 6,000 American teenagers found that Amazon’s mindshare among teens reached 49 percent in the fall of this year, up from 43 percent in the fall of 2016. To put that in some perspective, Olson said Amazon’s mindshare level among teenagers is 8.5 times greater than that of eBay, which came in second place in Piper’s survey.

One factor adding to Amazon’s presence among teens is its Prime service. For anyone who doesn’t know about it, for $99 a year, a Prime subscriber gets free, two-day shipping on almost anything they buy from Amazon, and access to several Prime services, most notably, the company’s Prime Video streaming feature. The Piper survey found that 66 percent of respondents said their families had a Prime membership, up from 60 percent in the spring. And when it comes to new Prime members, Amazon is growing across teens’ economic backgrounds, as 46 percent of new subscribers are coming from what Piper called “middle income and lower income households.”

Amazon is doing what it can to broaden its base of teen customers, while also remain on the good side of their parents. On Wednesday, Amazon said it would allow parents to add up to four teens, between the ages of 13 and 17, to their Amazon accounts. The new feature will let teens do their own shopping, but parents will be able to set spending limits, and get notifications of when their kids buy something.

And probably most importantly, the teens will have to pay their own way, and won’t be able to see their parents’ credit card information.

Middle Innings:

Lights, Camera…Uber?: Susan Fowler, the former Uber engineer turned whistleblower, is said to be shopping her story to Hollywood studios in the hopes of getting a movie deal done. Fowler was thrust into the spotlight earlier this year when a blog post of hers that alleged many incidents of sexual harassment by male Uber executives went viral and led to an upheaval among Uber’s top brass.

Strap ’em On: Facebook has made a big deal out of its Oculus VR headset, but so far, the virtual-reality goggles have been received with lukewarm feelings by the masses, in part because of the price tags associated with the gadget and their affiliated touch controllers. But, at an event in San Jose on Wednesday, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Oculus will come out with a new headset next year that will cost just $199, in an effort to appeal to new customers, and lure away those who have bought rival headsets like the Samsung Gear VR.

Bottom of the Lineup:

“Trillion” with a “T”: In fact, you could say that’s four “T’s”, if you want. That’s because on Wednesday, the combined market capitalization of the companies in the Mercury News’ Silicon Valley 150 (SV150, for short) topped $4 trillion for the first time ever, by ending the day at $4.015 trillion. And that was $22.7 billion more than the $3.993 billion market cap where the SV150 finished on Tuesday. The SV150 consists of the top 150 regional companies based on their annual revenue. Among the companies in the SV150 are Apple (and its $808 billion market cap), Intel, Google parent Alphabet and Cisco Systems.

Quote of the Day: “We don’t give a rat’s about being first, we want to be the best, and give people a great experience.” — Apple CEO Tim Cook, speaking in an interview about the company’s augmented reality toolkit, called ARKit.